When giving his opinion on why the OT rules must change, King says this:

2. Overtime has become over-reliant on playing for field goals. In the first five years of overtime, NFL kickers were accurate on 61 percent of their attempts. In the last five years, the number is 82 percent. Except for the lousy performances of kickers in the playoffs this year, you can see why teams play for the field goal in overtime. Teams surely do: Since 1994, 73 percent of overtime games have been won by a field goal.

In the Saints’ one-possession overtime victory over Minnesota this season, New Orleans won the toss, returned the ball to its 39, got two drive-enhancing penalties totaling 17 yards, struggled for 22 more yards, and won on a 40-yard Garrett Hartley field goal.

Think of it this way: When overtime was invented in the days of the Nixon Administration, the kickoff point was five yards to the kicking team’s advantage, and a 40-yard field goal was a real challenge. Now the receiving team rarely starts at the 20, and a 40-yard field goal is probably an 85-percent guarantee.

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Should we just go ahead and put an asterisk next to the Saints’ Super Bowl victory, Pete? Why cite this as an example to support your cause? Whatever. The can’t ruin my post Super Bowl buzz.

As for changing the OT rules, I don’t see a need because football isn’t all about the offenses. Defense and special teams has to show up too. If your team loses the coin toss, your defense should make the stop after your special teams first does a good job of holding the kick return to minimal yardage. It’s not all about the offenses! This is what did the Vikings in. Their special teams first allowed Pierre Thomas to return the ball to the 40 yard line and then their defense couldn’t stop the Saints from getting into field goal range. They came very close to stopping them, but didn’t. Game over. Those who think the rule needs to change after this are just whining because they didn’t get the Favre vs. Manning matchup they desperately wanted.

Think of it this way: When overtime was invented in the days of the Nixon Administration, the kickoff point was five yards to the kicking team’s advantage, and a 40-yard field goal was a real challenge. Now the receiving team rarely starts at the 20, and a 40-yard field goal is probably an 85-percent guarantee.

Somebody probably ought to hip Peter King to the fact that a 40 yard field goal is a 40 yard field goal. It was no more challenging then than it is now.

He might have also forgotten that right around the time they moved the kickoff point back 5 yards, they moved the goalposts back TEN yards, from the goal line to the end line.

He acts like it’s 5 yards easier (from a field position standpoint) to hit a 40 yard FG these days, but it’s actually 5 yards harder. And from a kicking standpoint, it’s exactly the same as it always was: 40 yards.

King probably also forgot that Longwell kicked the ball into the Saints’ end zone to begin overtime. I suppose there’s an argument to be made that if Longwell had been 5 yards closer, it would have gone 6 yards into the end zone instead of 1, and Pierre would have taken a knee instead of returning it to the Saints’ 39.

What a weak excuse of an argument.